introduction

• big data led to new classes of goods and services
  • embraced by institutions and individuals
  • perceived as a threat to fundamental values (autonomy, privacy, fairness, justice, due process, etc)
• long-standing tension that characterize each successive wave of technological innovation in the last fifty years
• attempts to deal with new threats draw from the toolbox that worked in the past
  • anonymity and informed consent come from there
• anonymity
  • common applications of big data undermine the values that anonymity had protected → even when individuals are not identifiable they are reachable
• consent
  • inefficacy of consent as a matter of individual choice
  • absurdity of believing that consent can fully specify the terms of interaction between data collector and data subject

definitions and background theory

big data

the paradigm of big data is a way of thinking about knowledge through data and a frame-work for supporting decision making, rationalizing action, and guiding practice

this involves a belief in the power of finely observed patters, structures, and models drawn inductively from massive datasets

privacy as contextual integrity

• privacy as the requirement that information about people flows in accordance with informational norms
  • informational norms prescribe informational flows according to key actors, types of information, and constraints under which flow occurs (transmission principles)
  • control over information about oneself is just one of the many transmission principles
  • contextual informational norms may change, and science and technology are significant agents of change
• privacy, understood as contextual integrity, is fundamentally part of the big data story for it immediately alerts us to the ways any practice conflicts with the expectations we may have based on entrenched information-flow norms

privacy has instrumental value → other ethical values are sustained by the ways information does and does not flow

anonymity